Conventionally, standard home entertainment systems and other electronic equipment consist of controllers or other control terminals connected to the system, and various types of data regarding the control environment of the control terminals and the progress in a game being executed by the entertainment system are stored in memory cards or other external storage devices connected to the system. However, in order for a plurality of people to play a game simultaneously, there is a known method whereby the control terminals are not connected directly to the entertainment system, but rather a repeater is connected to the entertainment system so it is possible for a plurality of control terminals to be connected simultaneously to this repeater, which repeater is then connected to a control terminal. By using such a repeater, a plurality of control terminals can be connected to one repeater, so a plurality of people are able to play games with the entertainment system, giving an advantage in the diversity of games.
However, in such a prior art electronic equipment communications system wherein a plurality of control terminals can be simultaneously connected to the entertainment system via a repeater, the external storage device is conventionally connected directly to the entertainment system. Therefore, when data for each control terminal is stored individually in the external storage device, there is a problem in that it is necessary to divide the storage area of the external storage device and store data individually in each storage area, or reconnect the external storage device for each control terminal, and thus it may not be possible to allocate sufficient storage, or it may be necessary to reinsert the external storage device for each control terminal.
For this reason, technology has been proposed whereby a number of external storage device connectors corresponding to the number of control terminal connectors are provided, and by connecting a number of external storage devices corresponding to the number of connected control terminals, the complexity of reinserting the external storage device is reduced and storage area is provided for each control terminal as described in unexamined Japanese patent application No. JP-A-H8-191951. In the technology disclosed in the '191951 publication, by connecting the system-side connecting plug provided on the repeater to the control terminal connector of the entertainment system, communication among the electronic equipment, control terminals and external storage devices via the repeater is implemented. However, in such prior art disclosure, the electronic equipment and repeater are connected by control terminal connectors, so the control signals output from the electronic equipment are input to the repeater via the communications system used for control terminals including this control terminal connector. There are several problems inherent with such an arrangement.
First, the electronic equipment of the communications system used for control terminals is not normally provided with circuitry for suppression of unwanted radiation, so there is a problem in that the data rate of this communications system is extremely slow. Specifically, while the data rate between the electronic equipment and external storage device is roughly 24 Mbps, the data rate between the electronic equipment and control terminal is usually a maximum of 500 kbps. Accordingly, when switching control of the repeater is performed by means of a control signal output from the electronic equipment to the communications system used for control terminals, the data rate is slow, so there is a problem that high-speed switching of the control terminal connector or external storage device connector in the repeater cannot be achieved. In addition, key input data from the control terminal is constantly broadcast to the electronic equipment so the data density is high, so on this point also, there is a problem in that high-speed switching of the control terminal connector or external storage device connector in the repeater cannot be achieved. In particular, as the central processing units of recent electronic equipment reach higher processor speeds, an electronic equipment communications system that is able to achieve high-speed switching of the control terminal connector or external storage device connector in the repeater is desirable.
It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide an electronic equipment communications system that is able to achieve high-speed switching of the control terminal connector or external storage device connector in the repeater, and a repeater and electronic equipment used therein.
Still other objects and advantages of the invention will become clear upon review of the following detailed description in conjunction with the appended drawings.